Matthew DeHaven, Principal Engineer, CTC Technology & Energy

Congratulations to the rural town of Alford, Massachusetts, on this week’s ribbon cutting for a fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) network. The event—held at a new telecommunications hut next to the town’s fire station—is a key milestone, and a remarkable achievement for a town of only about 500 residents.

CTC is proud to have designed Alford’s FTTP network, called AlfordLink. The network, which is still under construction, will provide 1 Gigabit service for $110 per month and telephone service for $12.95. So far, AlfordLink has 102 subscribers.

The town borrowed $1.6 million to build the network and will also receive $480,000 in state grant funds through the Massachusetts Broadband Institute, a state agency, toward construction costs.

It is also noteworthy that Alford’s public broadband entity (a municipal lighting plant, or MLP) forged a strong partnership with another municipal utility to enable this project. Through an intergovernmental agreement, Whip City Fiber—the broadband arm of Westfield Gas & Electric, in Westfield, Massachusetts—will be AlfordLink’s operator and service provider.

Tuesday’s event was attended by Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito; Peter Puciloski, chair of the Alford MLP board; and other local officials.